pages tagged Ubuntuhttp://coyote.works//tags/Ubuntu/
Coyote WorksikiwikiMon, 20 Apr 2020 04:13:00 +0000Notes From Damage Control Centralhttp://coyote.works//posts/DCC20200420/http://coyote.works//posts/DCC20200420/
BlatherUbuntucreativityMon, 20 Apr 2020 04:03:00 +00002020-04-20T04:13:00Z<p>In no particular order:</p>
<ul>
<li>Systems continue crashing around me. Rare error messages have
been commonplace instead. I have been taxing surviving hardware to
the limit as field expedients to keep things working. There is an
endpoint to how far I can take field expedients before they fail
too. I have to figure out what I am going to upgrade/replace in
short order.</li>
<li>The conduct of recorded church services continues. People are
watching what&#39;s posted. I suppose that&#39;s okay?</li>
<li>I did <code>do-release-upgrade -d</code> to take the install of
Ubuntu MATE on the Raspberry Pi 3B+ to Focal Fossa (soon to be
20.04 on Thursday if all goes well). It functions rather nicely. It
is also my main desktop machine at the moment.</li>
<li>One of the previously paying clients is looking to resume
operations if Governor Mike DeWine proceeds with loosening up
lockdown as of May 1st. In the realm of governmental actions, 11
days might as well be an eternity where outcomes can potentially
change endlessly. I&#39;m still trying to see what to do to anticipate
their needs which is either going to be looking for logistics gear
to facilitate changes in how they conduct business or ways to set
up video streaming gear that are grunt proof.</li>
<li>I sent the draft proposals to city council on how it might
break its impasse relative to fixing the budget shortfall. They&#39;ve
had some spectacular media coverage of them not being able to work
together. Lockdown gives me way too much time to think and I kinda
like having fire and police protection so offering help seems like
a good idea.</li>
<li>Tinkering in LaTeX2e continues.</li>
<li>With luck I should be better available for the G cycle.</li>
</ul>
/posts/DCC20200420/#commentsConsidering Demobilizationhttp://coyote.works//posts/Demob20200331/http://coyote.works//posts/Demob20200331/
BlatherUbuntuWed, 01 Apr 2020 01:01:00 +00002020-04-01T01:07:30Z<p>In a disaster situation, the process of demobilization relates
to coming back to a normal steady state. Some disasters are
relatively short-term events such as a multiple car crash on a
roadway. The current pandemic is one of the longer term events.</p>
<p>I end up looking at things from a bit of a narrow angle when it
comes to economic impact right now. In part this comes from my
present isolation. Of course, <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20200331235649/https://www.cleveland19.com/2020/03/31/ohio-gov-dewine-every-signal-given-indicating-that-states-stay-at-home-order-will-be-extended/">
this isolation is expected to be extended for an unknown period per
Ohio&rsquo;s Governor</a>.</p>
<p>Newspapers and radio stations across the country are collapsing
financially right now. Big chains like Lee Enterprises and Gannett
are laying off personnel to the point that their newspapers are
unable to function. In Gannett&rsquo;s case they could conceivably swap
customers of their local titles over to receiving <em>USA
Today</em> for the duration of the emergency but Lee Enterprises
doesn&rsquo;t have such a readily apparent fall-back. Radio stations have
been applying to the Federal Communications Commission for &ldquo;special
temporary authority&rdquo; to go silent due to advertising disappearing
and some are going out of business entirely such as <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20200401001947/https://www.pressherald.com/2020/03/25/woxo-says-farewell-to-listeners/">
WTME and related stations in Maine</a>.</p>
<p>Why on Earth does this matter for somewhere like Planet Ubuntu?
In this time of crisis while so many are confined inside it means
everything. We&rsquo;re not going to be moving to a streaming-only world
as we are finding just how much throughput the world&rsquo;s networks
happen to be able to handle. Radio New Zealand reported that
<a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20200401002944/https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/412860/coronavirus-lockdown-new-zealand-setting-internet-traffic-records">
New Zealand measured 2.82 terabytes of data transferred per second
on the first day of their lockdown</a>.</p>
<p>Today&rsquo;s infrastructure has trouble handling capacity surges.
Those aren&rsquo;t going away any time soon. We have to plan for what we
want our world to look like on the other side of this crisis.
Building up things undergirding Ubuntu Studio would be great as
we&rsquo;ll likely need ways to reboot newspapers and radio stations or
create new ones. There is at least <a href="https://mediarealm.com.au/articles/open-source-broadcast-software-github/">
one random list of station automation software out there</a> that I
found to evaluate for packaging. Prior to the current
unpleasantness packaging such software would&rsquo;ve been thought of as
an exercise for setting up a streaming audio service but with the
number of broadcast radio stations going dark there is a market
niche possibly opening up.</p>
<p>None of us knows how this crisis is going to play out. It is
never too soon to plan for life on the other side of it. As my
streaming television services end up buffering <em>even on the
ads</em> and downgrading video to unintelligible messes I can only
hope regular mass media survives in some form. The constant
COVID-19 PSAs across <strong>all</strong> platforms are driving me
batty&#8230;</p>
/posts/Demob20200331/#commentsSystems Failure At Main Missionhttp://coyote.works//posts/MainMission20200323/http://coyote.works//posts/MainMission20200323/
BlatherCOVID19UbuntuTue, 24 Mar 2020 03:03:00 +00002020-03-24T03:50:35Z<p>I am still alive. In a prior post I had mentioned that things
had been changing rather rapidly. With a daily press conference by
the Governor of Ohio there has been one new decree after another
relative to the COVID-19 situation.</p>
<p>A &quot;stay at home&quot; order <a href="https://coronavirus.ohio.gov/wps/portal/gov/covid-19/home/stay-at-home-information/stay-at-home-order-frequently-asked-questions">
takes effect at 0359 hours Coordinated Universal Time on Tuesday,
March 24, 2020</a>. This is not quite a &quot;lockdown&quot; but pretty much
has me stuck. The State of Ohio has <a href="https://coronavirus.ohio.gov/wps/portal/gov/covid-19/home/Resources-for-Economic-Support/econ">
resources posted as to economic help in this situation</a> but
they&#39;re also dealing with many multiple systems crashes as they try
to react and some of their solutions are extremely
bureaucratic.</p>
<p>Although I wanted to get started with doing daily livestream on
Twitch there have been some logistical delays. I am also having to
scrape together what equipment I do have at home to set up
make-shift production capacity since our proper production facility
is now inaccessible for the immediate future. There is an Amazon
wish list <a href="https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/3EF0FCUYFY4R7?ref_=wl_share">
of replacement items to try to fill in gaps</a> if anybody feels
generous though I am not sure when/if those would show up in the
current circumstances. That&#39;s also why I&#39;m having to encourage
folks to either <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B085BGGC9R">buy
the Kindle version</a> or <a href="https://leanpub.com/sfaltorigin/">buy the EPUB version</a> of the
novella since the print version is possibly not going to be
available any time soon.</p>
<p>I have further testing of packages to do to see what I can make
break. OBS Studio certainly does make the fan on my laptop go into
high speed action. Life here at Main Mission is getting stranger by
the day. <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/23/coronavirus-economy-trump-restart-145222">
With debating ensuing about the economic carnage leading to
possible economic disaster</a>, I can only note that I at least got
this up shortly before we entered lockdown.</p>
<p>The stay-at-home order gets reassessed on April 6th. It
technically has no expiration date to it currently so it can last
legally until the current governor leaves office in 2023. I do hope
we make progress in getting this mess resolved sooner rather than
later.</p>
/posts/MainMission20200323/#commentsWhen Events Overtake Planninghttp://coyote.works//posts/Overtake20200312/http://coyote.works//posts/Overtake20200312/
BlatherUbuntuFri, 13 Mar 2020 03:02:00 +00002020-03-13T03:38:37Z<p>The COVID-19 whirlwind continues in Ohio. The Governor of Ohio,
Mike DeWine, <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/ohio-schools-to-close-for-3-weeks-during-coronavirus-e2-80-98crisis-e2-80-99-gov-dewine-bans-gatherings-of-over-100-people/ar-BB116HDF">
ordered today a closure of K-12 schools for three weeks as well as
banning public gatherings of 100 or more people</a>. During those
three weeks schools will be making calamity preparations to
continue teaching via remote learning methods <em>if
necessary</em>. The ban on public gatherings of 100 or more people
in Ohio has no expiration date attached to it although, as a
practical matter, it technically expires when Governor DeWine
leaves office if not revoked sooner. He&#39;s in the second year of a
four year term so an unmodified order could theoretically run until
January 13, 2023.</p>
<p>Right now I am hurrying along trying to gather test participants
to see what I can do with video conferencing in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Microsoft_Teams&amp;oldid=943557459">
Microsoft Teams</a>. I have a few people and will need a few more.
Courtesy <a href="https://reason.com/2020/03/12/mormons-cancel-church/">UCLA&#39;s
Eugene Volokh</a>, it appears that the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter Day Saints is <a href="https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/gatherings-worldwide-temporarily-suspended">
suspending in-person church services across the entirety of the
planet</a>. They&#39;re digging in for the long haul. The neighboring
Roman Catholic diocese of Erie has <a href="https://www.eriercd.org/images/sections/news/pdf/Bishop%20Persico%20March%2012%20statement%20regarding%20Masses%20in%20the%20Diocese%20of%20Erie.pdf">
granted dispensation relative to the obligation to attend Sunday
mass for their faithful</a> but the local diocesan for the
Ashtabula area has not. The Roman Catholic diocese of Cleveland,
also nearby Ashtabula, <a href="https://www.dioceseofcleveland.org/news/2020/03/12/updated-coronavirus-directives-from-the-catholic-diocese-of-cleveland">
granted a smaller dispenation</a>. Nobody specifically has asked
for a plan at my church <em>yet</em> but normally I get asked at
the very last minute so I need to be prepared.</p>
<p>Apparently <a href="https://churchtechtoday.com/2016/01/29/10-church-live-streaming-providers-to-consider/">
there are a lot of articles already written on this topic</a> and
there is already a <a href="https://churchtechtoday.com/2018/04/04/live-stream-your-church-services-for-almost-nothing/">
shoe-string operations HOWTO</a> seemingly. Strangely enough
<a href="https://www.boxcast.com/solutions/church-streaming">turnkey
solutions exist</a> as well. These are things that normally would
<strong>never</strong> even be considered as being appropriate in
the life of the church I normally attend. Having to react to
changing circumstances and politicians making things up as they go
along means I am having to strike a happy medium as I go especially
as I have no budget of any sort.</p>
<p>Development efforts continue. I&#39;m going to have to pull what
documentation I can on <a href="https://snapcraft.io/obs-studio">OBS Studio</a> and study it
quickly. Eventually I have to document my efforts for
reproducibility.</p>
/posts/Overtake20200312/#commentsFollowing The Planning Phttp://coyote.works//posts/ThePlanningP20200310/http://coyote.works//posts/ThePlanningP20200310/
BlatherUbuntubusinessTue, 10 Mar 2020 22:47:00 +00002020-03-10T22:47:41Z<p>I should have been watching the <a href="https://www.wslconf.dev/">Windows Subsystem for Linux virtual
conference</a> today. For about five minutes I managed to do so.
Unfortunately my local broadband provider does not maintain the
infrastructure local to me very well. Reconnecting was not doable
and I gave up for the day. Looking at results from Speedtest.net
over two weeks shows a steady decline in average speed in both
directions for me. I&#39;ll be looking for recordings of today&#39;s events
and will try to sit in on tomorrow&#39;s proceedings.</p>
<p>Why bring that up? The big reason is to mention the need for
backup plans and continuity plans. With COVID-19 concerns in play
within the continental United States, the Windows Subsystem for
Linux conference had to switch from being an in-person event to a
virtual event. After my broadband decided to die on me I decided to
follow up on guidance from the state&#39;s election authorities to get
early voting out of the way <a href="http://archive.is/79JDv">as
reported by the Cleveland <em>Plain Dealer</em></a>. My account on
Instapaper has been full of closure listings in the local area such
as <a href="http://archive.is/JoOX7">Kent State University stopping
classes on all campuses including the local commuter campus in
Ashtabula</a>. Many people and institutions are having to
improvise, adapt, and overcome.</p>
<p>For the individual developer, though, there should be some
consideration about COVID-19. Is your code maintained in a way that
nobody else could access it if you were incapacitated? Do you have
a &quot;trusted person&quot; who has delegated access if you become
incapacitated so automated systems can continue to function? Is
your code clean and commented sufficiently so that somebody could
take over maintaining it if, heaven forfend, you are out of
commission for an extended period of time?</p>
<p>These are all good business practices. The COVID-19 situation
merely brings them into sharp focus as being
<strong>essential</strong> business practices. If you haven&#39;t
implemented them already there is no time like the present.</p>
<p>This is not to be focused on doom and gloom. Going it alone in
any enterprise is fraught with peril. I may have written a novella
recently myself that <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B085BGGC9R">wound up on Amazon for
purchase</a> but there were still other sets of hands that
participated in the final production process. There is plenty of
&quot;business continuity planning&quot; advice out there that scales from a
tiny solo coder business to a large business empire. Whether you
look at <a href="https://www.business.gov.au/New-to-business-essentials/When-things-dont-go-to-plan">
Australian advice</a>, <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/business-continuity-planning">
British advice</a>, <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/services/policing/emergencies/continuity.html">
Canadian advice</a>, <a href="https://www.business.govt.nz/risks-and-operations/planning-for-the-unexpected-bcp/continuity-and-contingency-planning/">
New Zealander advice</a>, or <a href="https://www.ready.gov/business-continuity-plan">American
advice</a> you should get started.</p>
<p>This too shall pass. I have reaction plans to prepare for a
couple situations that some folks don&#39;t want <em>yet</em> but will
likely want from me with very little notice. My planning for the
next few days is going to involve fussing over <a href="https://snapcraft.io/obs-studio">OBS Studio</a> and what I can do
with it in my impaired connectivity situation. We&#39;re all going to
have some adventures in store from this, I think, as we mostly
follow <a href="https://www.emergency-response-planning.com/blog/bid/55017/The-Emergency-Operations-Planning-P">
the planning P</a>.</p>
/posts/ThePlanningP20200310/#commentsLate February Miscellanyhttp://coyote.works//posts/LateMiscellany20200221/http://coyote.works//posts/LateMiscellany20200221/
BlatherUbuntuSat, 22 Feb 2020 03:30:00 +00002020-02-22T04:45:45Z<p>Sometimes I don&#39;t have enough to write a single discrete blog
post. Those times result in a miscellany of brief items. In no
particular order:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>My local member of the US House of Representatives held &quot;open
office hours&quot; today locally. For British readers this is akin to a
Member of Parliament holding a &quot;surgery&quot;. Strangely enough, I went
and was seen. I had a &quot;Memorandum Of Conversation&quot; prepared
relative to the points I needed to raise and his staff was
appreciative. It was footnoted and full of background details for
later staff review. I&#39;m not sure I&#39;ll see any action but out of my
group I had the simplest presentation and the only one with
concrete suggested courses of action included.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Feature Freeze and Debian Import Freeze are coming up later this
week per the <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FocalFossa/ReleaseSchedule">release
schedule for Focal Fossa</a>. If you&#39;re not sure what a Feature
Freeze happens to be, you should <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FeatureFreeze">read the definition</a>.
This LTS release will come out <strong>after</strong> Easter the
way the calendar falls.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Lent begins in much of the world with Ash Wednesday on February
26th. The cycles and seasons of the year continue to march ever
onward.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The e-mail newsletter is continuing to go out. The most recent
installment <a href="http://archive.is/fRwfr">discussed why folks
in the EU get 451 errors while trying to look at some US-based news
websites</a>. The newsletter is <a href="https://tinyletter.com/erielp">free to subscribe to</a>, of
course.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>My broadband has been having sudden fade-outs locally as has the
electricity service. Frankly I&#39;m getting tired of listening to the
UPS units scream and hear breakers pop when the power fails.
Irritants like that are why I made the joke I did to my congressman
earlier today which he thankfully understood and laughed at.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The laptop I am currently using is getting old which is
resulting in compounding mechanical difficulties. To consider
re-purposing Raspberry Pi hardware for mobile usage with it running
Ubuntu appropriately is something I still have in mind. There is a
<a href="https://magpi.raspberrypi.org/articles/the-best-raspberry-pi-laptop-kits">
relevant magazine article</a> that I need to re-read. I don&#39;t think
<a href="https://learn.adafruit.com/mini-raspberry-pi-handheld-notebook-palmtop/overview">
the Adafruit DIY project</a> has been updated for the Raspberry Pi
4, unfortunately.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>After taking time to re-read <a href="https://www.tug.org/TUGboat/Articles/tb29-3/tb93mansfield.pdf">&quot;How
to develop your own document class &mdash; our experience&quot;</a>, I need to
look at how to adapt a package from CTAN such as either <a href="https://www.ctan.org/pkg/newspaper">newspaper</a> or <a href="https://www.ctan.org/pkg/papertex">papertex</a>. Then again, it
would be odd if I said I was looking at trying to establish a print
newsletter or other small press item at the immediate moment.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>I know I wrote about the usage of Markdown in LaTeX not that
long ago but I should state that TUGBoat, the publication of the
TeX Users Group, <a href="https://www.tug.org/TUGboat/tb40-1/tb124novotny-markdown.pdf">had
a nice article about the package recently</a>.</p>
</li>
</ul>
/posts/LateMiscellany20200221/#commentsTrying A Minimum Working Examplehttp://coyote.works//posts/TexDown20200218/http://coyote.works//posts/TexDown20200218/
UbuntucreativityTue, 18 Feb 2020 16:30:00 +00002020-02-18T21:59:11Z<p>When you make assertions in a channel like the <a href="https://ubuntupodcast.org/">Ubuntu Podcast</a>&#39;s Telegram <a href="https://telegram.me/joinchat/AVKyxj5X3dPTT98ME3U06Q">chatter
channel</a> they sometimes have to be backed up. Recently I made
reference to how you could utilize Markdown within a LaTeX
document. I should take a moment to discuss a way to use LuaLaTeX
to make your Markdown documents look nice. We&#39;re going to build a
&quot;Minimum Working Example&quot; to illustrate things.</p>
<p>First, I will refer to a package on the Comprehensive TeX
Archive Network simply named <a href="https://www.ctan.org/pkg/markdown">markdown</a>. That handles
processing Markdown input. In its documentation you find that you
can actually input a separate Markdown-formatted file into the
macros provided which will convert them into appropriate LaTeX code
and add that programmatically into your document. LaTeX is a
Turing-complete programming language after all.</p>
<p>Using the basic default <a href="https://ctan.org/pkg/article">article class</a> and bearing in
mind that I am based in the United States of America, we can have
something like this:</p>
<pre><code>\documentclass[12pt,letter]{article}
\usepackage{hyperref}
\usepackage{xurl}
\usepackage{markdown}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont{Liberation Serif}
\begin{document}
\markdownInput{file.md}
\end{document}
</code></pre>
<p>Taking that example line by line we mostly have a preamble and a
very short document. First we declare the document&#39;s class as
&quot;article&quot; and pass the global options of wanting 12 point type and
since I am in the USA I want to use Letter paper. Next we load the
hypertext support package <a href="https://ctan.org/pkg/hyperref">hyperref</a>. We then load the
smaller support package <a href="https://ctan.org/pkg/xurl">xurl</a> which allows for URLs to break
at any alphanumeric character in text. Our main player <a href="https://www.ctan.org/pkg/markdown">markdown</a> then gets loaded.
Since we&#39;re using LuaLaTex to compile the document we then load the
<a href="https://ctan.org/pkg/fontspec">fontspec</a> package to
allow using any OpenType fonts. Liberation Serif is a font that
ships in the basic install for any Ubuntu flavour so we&#39;ll choose
that. While we could have done something obscure like use <a href="https://public-sans.digital.gov/">Public Sans</a> we&#39;ll stick to
basics today.</p>
<p>You can save that file locally as <code>mwe.tex</code>. Now, we
need our Markdown file. We&#39;ll keep it simple with this:</p>
<pre><code>We have a **great** help system at [AskUbuntu](https://askubuntu.com/).
</code></pre>
<p>Save that single line as <code>file.md</code>. You&#39;ll want to
have both files in the same directory. From there you can then
appropriately invoke LuaLaTeX with shell escape enabled and you&#39;ll
get a file with the line typeset and the link showing as a
footnote. The link in the footnote will be clickable.</p>
<p>This is a very minimal example. You can modify what is
essentially a driver file for LaTeX to process through your
Markdown creations to make them look nice. Pandoc does something
similar but this allows a bit closer ability to fiddle with
settings. This can be included in automation chains to make pretty
print output fairly readily with contemporary web stylings.</p>
<p>For further introduction to LaTeX, the guide that really helped
me is &quot;A short introduction to LaTeX2e&quot; mainted by Tobias Oetiker
which you can find in your appropriate language <a href="https://www.ctan.org/pkg/lshort">on the Comprehensive TeX Archive
Network</a>.</p>
<p>Good Luck &amp; Good Hunting.</p>
/posts/TexDown20200218/#commentsMaking A Service Launchhttp://coyote.works//posts/ServiceLaunch20200211/http://coyote.works//posts/ServiceLaunch20200211/
BlatherUbuntuWed, 12 Feb 2020 03:46:00 +00002020-02-12T04:05:22Z<p>I hinted previously that I would launch this and that there were
ironic reasons for doing so. It is best that I explain myself.
Explanations generally make things clearer.</p>
<p>There was a push for <a href="http://erielookingproductions.info">Erie Looking Productions</a>
to return to producing at least general programming. Now that I am
no longer a federal civil servant the restrictions that held me
back for six years from doing so are <strong>off</strong>. The
problem is that the current studio space suffered physical damage.
The audio equipment and the recording computer are fine and secured
but the physical space is not usable. We don&#39;t have a fallback
space at this time nor do we have the economic means to procure
one. Repairs to the physical space were <em>supposed</em> to be
done this month but I have not heard much about the status of that
lately.</p>
<p>I am also dealing with some long-term recovery from some surgery
that was done. While I can talk to people it can sound slightly
garbled at times. The last check-in at the doctor&#39;s office didn&#39;t
show me breaking any speed records to be able to move ahead in
matters so I am stuck with &quot;slow and steady&quot; for the time being.
That is going to possibly not be fixed properly until some point in
April.</p>
<p>While I know the folks behind the <a href="https://ubuntupodcast.org/">Ubuntu Podcast</a> are <a href="https://twitter.com/ubuntupodcast/status/1226499636464144385">planning
to return to air shortly</a> I will instead be taking a different
path. The current hotness appears to be launching your own
newsletter such as this <a href="https://fab.industries/newsletter/">technology one</a>. Since
podcasting is not feasible at the moment the reformatting of
content to a strictly textual form seem like the simplest way
forward <em>for now</em>.</p>
<p>I <strong>could</strong> operate an announce-only mailman list
on a minimal Ubuntu 19.10 droplet on Digital Ocean. However, my
current economic circumstances have instead pushed me over to
trying to utilize tinyletter.com instead. To quote the 13th &amp;
21st US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, in an apt manner:
&quot;As you know, you go to war with the army you have, not the army
you might want or wish to have at a later time.&quot;</p>
<p>The newsletter is entitled &quot;The Interim Edgewood Stratagem&quot;.
Release frequency should be once weekly but I haven&#39;t settled a
firm day yet but it would likely be out on a Wednesday, Thursday,
or Friday each week. We&#39;ll see how it develops. I am pretty sure we
are not initially going to dive into unknown unknowns if we can
help it.</p>
<p>Twice a month there is the chance that the text of my sermon
presented on Sunday morning at the nursing home <em>may</em> be
presented that week. Initially the first release would be in fact
the text of my sermon from Sunday. That is planned to go out later
in the day on February 12th.</p>
<p>The first regular essay would go out during the week of February
16th. In that essay I want to get to would be to talk about a bit
of an unresolved mystery case involving a Pacific island nation
suffering an Internet blackout. Style-wise this wouldn&#39;t be
<a href="https://darknetdiaries.com/">Darknet Diaries</a> but
rather something a bit different. After the Pacific jaunt would
hopefully be an essay on the changing business regulation climate
in the US that may not help folks in the open source world who
&quot;hang their own shingle&quot; to work as independent contractors. Once
through that we would see where stories go. I do know I do
<strong>not</strong> want to talk about the presidential primary
campaigns if at all possible as nothing productive comes out of
worrying about them while other craziness is in play.</p>
<p>You can sign up at <a href="https://tinyletter.com/erielp">the
subscribe page</a> for free. Support is welcomed though not
required through avenues such as <a href="https://liberapay.com/smkellat">Liberapay</a>. If you just want to
drop in a <a href="https://www.paypal.me/erielooking/0.25">quarter
via PayPal</a> or maybe just <a href="https://www.paypal.me/erielooking/0.02">two cents</a> that is
doable as well. The <a href="https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/3EF0FCUYFY4R7/?ref_=lol_ov_le">
shopping wishlist for replacement gear</a> also still exists as I
watch equipment fail and otherwise decay.</p>
<p>This is an adventure that I am nervous about starting. Once upon
a time I was a working journalist who was routinely published in
print, no less. The media landscape isn&#39;t the same these days but
this will likely feel like getting back on a bicycle to ride again
after a long time away.</p>
<p>To quote a commercial that aired quite a bit a few years ago:
&quot;Let me tell you a story&#8230;&quot;</p>
/posts/ServiceLaunch20200211/#commentsEarly February Miscellanyhttp://coyote.works//posts/Miscellany20200204/http://coyote.works//posts/Miscellany20200204/
BlatherUbuntuWed, 05 Feb 2020 03:12:00 +00002020-02-05T04:09:02Z<p>In no particular order:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>After fussing with it enough I was able to move the website for
<a href="http://erielookingproductions.info">Erie Looking
Productions</a> over to a different provider. Eventually there will
be an SSL certificate once that actually generates within the next
day or so. The transition had a few too many moving parts to it
which resulted in a bit of breakage. Fortunately the website wasn&#39;t
down <em>too</em> long.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>I got word back that the almost-novella story I submitted for a
contest didn&#39;t make it to the list for judges to consider. It is a
pretty big contest. The question now is what to do with the story.
It is long enough that if I utilize the <a href="https://www.ctan.org/pkg/novel">novel</a> class in LuaLaTex with
appropriate font choices and set my paper size wisely I could
possibly make a print offering somewhere like <a href="https://www.lulu.com/">Lulu</a> and just release it as an
independent pocket book as well as make an ebook offering on
<a href="https://leanpub.com/">Leanpub</a>. Since the story was
originally written step-by-step in a <a href="https://hackage.haskell.org/package/gitit">gitit</a> wiki I also
ended up using the <a href="https://www.ctan.org/pkg/markdown">markdown</a> package found on
the Comprehensive TeX Archive Network to easily shift into
submission format using the <a href="https://www.ctan.org/pkg/sffms">science fiction manuscripts
class</a> the raw text with some bash scripting and coreutils
usage. Yes, it is happened to be a dirty hack that I&#39;m not ready to
stick on Launchpad anywhere but it worked nicely. No, <a href="https://pandoc.org/">pandoc</a> was not used in this scenario.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>So far none of the packages I have installed on my Focal Fossa
machine have significantly broken on me. This is good. I have been
using the machine for day to day use.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>I&#39;ve disappeared from IRC again as the droplet on Digital Ocean
that had my ZNC bouncer had to be turned off. I&#39;ll figure something
out eventually and make a return when resources permit.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>There may be a need for me to start a newsletter on <a href="https://tinyletter.com/">tinyletter</a> to try get familiar with
the platform and otherwise be able to evaluate it. I cannot
actually engage in podcasting right now for some ironic reasons.
Considering that I cannot being on a microphone and outside being a
writer or post-production editor it seems maintaining a newsletter
would be an interesting side trip for now. We&#39;ll see if I have to
go ahead and launch that project. Watch this space for
details&#8230;</p>
</li>
</ul>
/posts/Miscellany20200204/#commentsEnd of January Miscellanyhttp://coyote.works//posts/EndJan2020Miscellany/http://coyote.works//posts/EndJan2020Miscellany/
BlatherUbuntuFri, 31 Jan 2020 05:31:00 +00002020-01-31T05:33:46Z<p>In short:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>ViacomCBS has an ad-supported streaming property known as Pluto
TV alongside the subscription-based CBS All Access. Normally the
two do not overlap in content. Currently there is an overlap as the
first episode of <em>Star Trek: Picard</em> is playing on a loop on
the Pluto TV <a href="https://pluto.tv/live-tv/pluto-tv-sci-fi">sci-fi channel</a>. This
plays fine in Firefox without any DRM worries or need of any
extensions to be loaded. As Ubuntu users look at video streaming
services potentially not playing nice due to tech incompatibilities
this content platform seems low-friction for getting started.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>I forgot the birthday of Stuart Langridge <a href="https://www.kryogenix.org/days/2020/01/30/the-most-powerful-birthday-in-the-world/">
yesterday</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Good luck to the United Kingdom with Brexit Day.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>There was a presentation on making films with free software at
Linux.conf.au 2020 <a href="https://lca2020.linux.org.au/schedule/presentation/169/">that I
need to watch yet</a> and that many of us should review. With
things like <a href="https://8bitversus.com/">8 Bit Versus</a> out
there already I frankly want to see an Ubuntu-related vodcasts
aggregator site some day.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Ever hear the expression &ldquo;good enough for government work&rdquo; in
the wild? Well, <a href="https://public-sans.digital.gov/">a font
now exists</a> in responses to that American colloquialism.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Eventually I will need to look at what snaps exist alongside
Ubuntu Core to do something like a small scale <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/s/405391/municipal-mesh-network/">
municipal mesh</a> as what we&rsquo;ve got in terms of broadband now is
not really cutting the mustard. Finding a peering partner would be
hard, though.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>For those that don&rsquo;t think getting releases put together is hard
enough, the <a href="http://www.puredarwin.org/">PureDarwin</a>
project looks like a great source of ideas and inspiration.</p>
</li>
</ul>
/posts/EndJan2020Miscellany/#comments